


The Intervention

by Hexiva



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Agender Character, Comedy, Dark-Side Jaesa Willsaam, Dramedy, Fix-It, Gen, The first half is comedy and the last half is serious, the Sith Warrior is the Mom Friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-12 01:04:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13536381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: The Sith Warrior stages an intervention for Jaesa, concerned about her change in behavior since falling to the dark side.





	The Intervention

When Jaesa Willsaam returned to the ship, her shipmates were sitting and waiting for her. They had been talking, but the moment she entered, they stopped, suddenly, and looked over at her. Vette looked slightly concerned. Quinn looked disapproving. Pierce looked bored. As for her master, the Emperor’s Wrath, Jaesa couldn’t read the expression in their golden eyes.

Jaesa looked back and forth between them. “Were you talking about me?” she asked.

“No,” Vette said, at the same time the Sith Lord said, “Yes.” They looked at each other. 

“Oh, get on with it,” Pierce said, rolling his eyes. The Sith warrior fixed him with a cold glare, and he hurried to correct himself, “Er - no offense meant, m’lord.”

“Jaesa,” the Sith Lord said, turning to face their apprentice, “We need to talk. We’re all your friends here - ”  Pierce let out a snort, only to turn it into a cough when the Sith’s head swivelled around to glare at him again. “We’re  _ all  _ your friends here,” the Sith repeated, “And we’re concerned about your behavior lately.”

“Concerned?” Jaesa echoed. “Has my performance as a Sith been less than satisfactory, my master? Then I will make it up to you, in blood.”

“‘Performance’ is the right word,” Vette said.

“See,” the Wrath said, pointing at Jaesa, “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Did I ask for blood? Did I ask you to kill anyone? No, what I said was ‘we’re concerned about your behavior lately.’ And you jumped right to murder. There’s more to life than murder, you know.”

“Just yesterday, I asked if you wanted to drink the last of the blue milk, and you said, ‘No, I only drink the screams of my enemy’s anguish,’” Vette volunteered. “That doesn’t even make sense. How do you drink screams?”

“I informed you as to Imperial Regulation No.3860, ‘No personnel shall engage in sexual congress aboard any official vessel of the Imperial military,’ and you told me that a true Sith does not control her passions,” Quinn said.

“And was I wrong?” Jaesa asked, of both Quinn and the Sith Warrior.

“Nnnnoooo,” the Sith warrior said, reluctantly, “But you could at least shut the door to your quarters first. I mean,  _ really _ .”

“Some of us are trying to work on board this ship,” Quinn huffed. 

“Was tellin’ her one of my stories from my black ops days - the one about how Tanido got himself into hot water over the Alderaan business - came to the end of the story, she looks me dead in the eyes and all she says is, ‘Black ops . . . black like my soul!’ Then she walks away.” Pierce sniggered. “I tell you, I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.”

“And the other day, when I caught you wool-gathering,” the Sith Lord said, “I asked what you were thinking about, and you said you were ‘revelling in the sinister power of the dark side.’”

Jaesa crossed her arms defensively. “I am Sith. I’m  _ supposed  _ to revel in the dark side. You brought me over to the dark side, and now you’re all shocked that I enjoy my ‘fall’ to the darkness?”

“It’s not that,” the Sith warrior said, uncomfortably. “If you’re happy with your new place in life, of course, I’m happy for you. But a month ago, you were a Jedi. You called up the Sith who was hunting you down and asked me if we couldn’t just talk this over like sensible people. You begged me to ‘stop this madness.’ And now every word out of your mouth is ‘dark side’ this, ‘I revel in the blood of my enemies’ that. You’ve even started dressing differently. I mean - ” They gestured to Jaesa’s clothing. “What is this? It looks like you’ve covered your breasts with bandages and then glued shoulderpads to the shoulders. I understand you want to fit in, but a simple black robe would have sufficed.”

“Is there a point to all of this, master?” Jaesa asked, pointedly. “Is this some sort of test?”

“No!” The Sith Lord said, throwing their hands up. “It’s not a test, or a lesson, or anything dark-side-related. I’m just worried about you.”

“It’s just, you know, it’s a big change,” Vette added. “You’ve completely changed your personality, your makeup, your clothing, everything, to fit in with - well, to fit in with what  _ you  _ think the Sith are like.”

“The dark side is about letting yourself be free, about embracing your emotions,” the Sith Lord said.

“And that’s what I’ve been doing!” Jaesa cried.

“But is it?” the Sith Lord asked, as if they had finally come to the crux of the issue. “Have you been embracing your emotions - or have you been acting out your idea of how people who embrace their emotions act? Are you really free, or have you just traded one stultifying self-image for another?” 

“I - ” Jaesa said, about to deny it. The lie caught in her throat. 

“That’s what I thought,” the Sith warrior said, gently. “Listen. You’re my apprentice. You don’t have anything to prove by being the baddest or the most violent. You’re not the villain in a cheap holodrama, so stop trying to act like one.”

Jaesa swallowed. “I - didn’t know I had been. I was just trying to be a good Sith. I mean, a bad Sith. I mean - you know what I mean.”

“Stop trying so hard,” the Sith Lord advised. “It doesn’t frighten anyone - they’ll act like good little minions to your face, and then laugh behind your back.” They gave Pierce a pointed look. “True power - true freedom - means not having to give a damn what people think about you, not having to pretend to be the perfect Jedi or the most monstrous Sith. When you realize that, you will be truly intimidating.”

“I - don’t know where to start,” Jaesa said, stumbling over her words. “I - I spent so many years try to be the perfect Jedi, to be - to be forgiving, to be unemotional, to have so many attachments, and it wasn’t - it wasn’t really me. I spent so long trying to be someone else, I don’t know if I remember how to be myself anymore.”

“It’ll come to you,” the Sith encouraged. “Don’t be afraid of who you were as a Jedi. Don’t try to force yourself to be a Sith. Somewhere between those two extremes, that’s where you’ll find yourself.”

“I don’t want to be half a Jedi and half a Sith, always stuck between two lives,” Jaesa protested. “I want - I want what I thought I had when I was a Jedi. Purity of purpose. A cause that wasn’t flawed or broken or hypocritical like Nomen Karr or those lightsided Sith.”

“That kind of purity is always a lie,” the Sith said, flatly. “No one is perfectly good or perfectly evil, Jaesa, whatever Nomen Karr may have taught you.”

“Then what can I believe in?” Jaesa asked, her voice shaking.

“Something doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth believing in. And,” they added, looking up at Jaesa, “That goes for people too.” They took a deep breath. “I know Nomen Karr meant a lot to you - ”

“And it was all a lie!” Jaesa burst out. “All of it! All of that talk about peace, about serenity, about harmony - he didn’t really believe in any of it!”

The Sith Lord was silent for a moment. “The Jedi teach that one’s emotions are irrelevant,” they said, slowly, “That they serve no purpose and should be disregarded. That is not true. But emotion is not the only true thing about a person. Nomen Karr felt pride, and anger, and jealousy - because he was human, because he was mortal - but he  _ chose  _ to follow the Jedi way. And both of those things - the darkness inside of him, the choices he made - are true. Just as the Jaesa Wilsaam who served faithfully as a Jedi padawan and the Jaesa Wilsaam who joined the Sith as my apprentice are both equally real.”

“But how can they both be true?” Jaesa asked, on the verge of tears. “How can two such different things both be true of the same person?”

“Because that’s how people are,” the Sith said, with a shrug. “I don’t know. I’m not a philosopher. All I know is, if you expect perfection, of yourself or anyone else - you will always be disappointed. There is no perfection. We all just muddle along and do the best we can - Sith and Jedi and everyone else.”

“What’s the point? What’s the point of trying, if nothing’s ever going to be good enough?” Jaesa asked.

“Because there’s a big difference between perfection and ‘good enough,’” the Sith said, with a little smile. “And learning that is just part of growing up, in the Empire or in the Republic.”

“I’m not a child,” Jaesa protested, although she felt like one in that moment.

“No,” the Sith agreed. “But you’re not as old as you think you are.”

There was a brief silence, which was shortly punctuated by Pierce. “Well, if that’s all done with then, who wants to go out for a pint with me?”

There were immediate noises of agreement from Vette and Quinn, both of whom were rather eager to be done with this conversation. As the other three left the ship  in search of a bar, Jaesa looked at her master, really looked, for the first time. She saw beneath the facade of an imperious, bloodthirsty Sith, and saw that the Emperor’s Wrath was really no older than Jaesa herself, a young, uncertain noble trying to prove themselves in a brutal society. And she looked beneath that, too, and saw . . .

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Jaesa asked her master. “You’re one of those light side Sith. All this time, I was scouring the galaxy for them, and you were right here . . .”

The Sith Lord took a deep breath and got to their feet, pacing around the ship’s cabin, eventually stopping, with their back to Jaesa, to stare out the window. “Not exactly,” they said, after awhile. “Like you, I never felt at home in the darkness  _ or  _ in the light. The truth is, I didn’t become a Sith because I had hatred for the galaxy burning in my heart. Why would I? The galaxy’s always treated me pretty well. I had a good home, I had a good family, I had  _ everything  _ growing up. I didn’t become a Sith because I was angry. I became a Sith because it was what was expected of me, and there’s more of that in the Empire than you might expect. The ones who really mean all that stuff about rage and passion - they’re a minority. Most of us are just in it for the power, or the status, or because we don’t know what else to do. I imagine the Jedi are the same.”

Jaesa sank down into her seat, dejected. “Then there really is no difference.”

“Maybe not,” the Sith agreed. “People are just people.”

“Then why do you do what you do?” Jaesa asked. “Why bother fighting for the Empire if they’re no better than the Jedi?”

The Sith considered. “Because the Empire is  _ mine,”  _ they said. “It is my heritage, just like the red of my skin and the yellow of my eyes. I’m not going to give up on it. And I believe - I’m arrogant enough to believe that I can make it a better place.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Jaesa asked. “What if it’s all for nothing?”

The Sith shrugged. “Then I’ll probably get executed by someone like you for not being Sith enough.” It didn’t sound like the possibility worried them much. “Are you planning on turning me in?” they asked.

Jaesa shook her head. “No. What would be the point?”

Her master patted her on the shoulder. “Then let’s go find Pierce and get drunk. It’ll all seem simpler once you’ve had a few.”


End file.
